"Conversation. What is it? A Mystery! It's the art of never seeming bored, of touching everything with interest, of pleasing with trifles, of being fascinating with nothing at all. How do we define this lively darting about with words, of hitting them back and forth, this sort of brief smile of ideas which should be conversation?" Guy de Maupassant

I just learned this weekend that an old friend and former colleague, Brian Lawler, is part of the dev team... very nice UI on this thing, and seems to facilitate certain kinds of interaction (read: non-gonad-driven) more elegantly than some of the other services out there right now. They're still in beta, but they say they hope to move into general release pretty soon. So far, I'm liking it a lot. Not ditching my Friendster account anytime soon, though.

Where else online could I schmooze with Satan, Carbohydrates, Mister Roboto, and vast legions of Goth/Burningman/Straightedge twentysomething hotties, all under one roof? Wait, don't answer that. Discuss [Boing Boing Blog]

So Mark Pincus' and Paul Martino's baby finally sees the light of day. I've been helping out, pushing in a few different directions. danah boyd is also involved. Come on over and try it out!

I got some benefit out of Ryze but not enough to justify paying for it. It's hard to see what being yet another member of Tribe.net would yield. Maybe if these networks worked out how to federate membership (and still make money) but I don't see tangible benefits in being a member.

I'm fairly active onRyzeandEcademy - in fits and starts. JoinedLinkedinbut did not get much out of it.Marcthen pointed outSonato me, and invited me to join Ringoand now Tribe.net. I signed up at Ringo but have been there only once since. Tried Sona too - but didnot bother to even put up a profile there. Tribe - hmmm - do i really want to - am not sure yet. Blogging, keeping up with the tremendous stuff pouring into my newsreaders hourly, and being active at Ryze and Ecademy, leave me with no time for more online networking. There's the physical world too :) - family, friends, work, hanging out ......... movies, music, partying .....

Yet as consciousness, awareness and evangelism about the power of networking grows, there are only likely to be new networks coming up almost daily. I guess only a few will be able to sustain themselves - and perhaps carve a niche for themselves. Tremendous learning opportunity here, on what makes some successful and others fall by the way. I sure learnt a lot from being really active on just Ryze, at one point.

I was in Delhi yesterday, meeting clients. Was telling them about how social software tools can engender community. On the flight back i thought to myself that it might be useful to really list down all that such tools can do in for an organisation. So i used some conventional marketing frameworks to table my thoughts. These are very initial - 'kachcha' (raw, unfinished) as we say colloquially, and hopefully a starting point for more.

I thought it may be useful to look at this whole area as a new paradigm for better / more effective / more cutting edge communication thru better networking ñ I feel that this (a new paradigm for communication in the networked age) could be a huge reason why / benefit area that a company may consider these enabling tools. Much is being written about how communication is changing in the new networked world ñ there are new generation cultures of use, youth are adopting new and more effective ways of communication, there's very good work being done in the area of collective intelligence and collaborative communities.

These tables are really a first attempt at qualifying this new paradigm of communication that embodies the following qualities intrinsically - collaborative, two-way, opening new windows and doors, trusted, harnessing collective intelligence.

Today an employee and an organisation communicates at many levels :

internal ñ between employees/depts./branches/countries ñ this is at two levels ñ one a more HR kind of function where usually the ëpolicyí and employee well-being issues are communicated in a top-down, or need-based manner ñ a one-way street